1 Corinthians 11:27-32 Why whoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 1. Ver. 27 has operated as a hindrance to the approach of many of our best to the Lord's table; but it is not so appalling as it looks. "Unworthily" must be understood relatively to human ignorance and imperfection; otherwise it would act as a bar to the approach of any. Were the right based upon righteousness there would be none but the Great Host at the table. The unworthy are they whose habitual temper is unchristlike, who, being unworthy, are content with their unworthiness. The qualified are those who wrestle with their bad spirit and tendencies, and who pant to be worthier men and the true children of God. 2. A sacrament is an outward sign of an inward experience. And this is the profanation — when he who gives the sign does not yearn for the thing signified. 3. The scruples that hold some back from the Lord's table are — I. AS TO THE AGE AT WHICH A PERSON SHOULD MAKE PUBLIC DECLARATION OF HIS DISCIPLESHIP. Now, the condition of time does not enter into the question at all. The spirit of life in man does not regulate its arrival by the chronometer. When the hour of conscious life in God and conscious fellowship with Him comes, then also comes the hour when you may give the sacred symbolic signs, and take your seat at the guest table of the Lord, no matter how young in years you may be. And, indeed, till the hour does come when you freely place yourself at the disposal of Christ's influence, you have no right to claim a place at that board, no matter how many your years. II. THAT THEIR MINDS ARE UNSETTLED BY DOUBT. Well! the doubting temper is not the most blessed; but at the same time all doubts are not sins. It is not seldom by doubt that God leads us to faith. And as long as doubt does not spring from worldliness or levity; as long as it does not shake our faith in God, in Christ, and in conscience; as long as it drives us to the feet of God in prayer, and not away from them in pride; as long as we wish to believe the things we find it hard to believe, so long may doubt be a schoolmaster to bring us home to Christ. Doubt of dogma is no sin; indifference to Christ's claims is; and the Lord has spread this table for the loving and the docile, not for the clear-headed system-maker and the scientific expert. The doubter who sits in the scorner's chair, deriding, jeering, sneering, let him alone stay away! and let the reverent and lowly listening doubter come, and Christ, the Host, will not withhold His hand. III. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF PERSONAL UNWORTHINESS OF NATURE. But, if that table were only for the worthy, it were arrogance in any mortal man to appear. Christ invites not the righteous but the sinful to come. Indeed, it is in the feeling that we are unworthy that our only qualification lies. It is not that we be holy, but that we aspire to be holy; and in whomsoever there is this desire, no matter how poor and imperfect his actual attainments are in such, and not in the self-satisfied Pharisee, you find the true disciple who may take his place at the guest table of the Lord. (J. Forfar.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. |
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